CBD —
I hadn’t had a chance to respond on this one, as I was working on something else for Leesea. The reality is that the USN will not buy Sea AMOS or NEMO for various reasons including “not invented here” (total Bravo Sierra) and no money in the budget (the truth).

That means an upgrade to the RCB (a variant of the CB90H) is dependent upon what’s now in the pipeline. Currently, the systems now in procurement that could be installed on the RCB are the CROWS II (a remote weapons system) designed by Kongsberg in Sweden. (The RCB currently has a CROWS .50 machine gun on top of the pilot house, but its other systems are strictly manual.)

CROWS and CROWS II is now being procured in number for the M240 7.62 NATO GPMG, .50 M2HB machine gun, and Mk 19 Mod 3 40mm grenade launcher. I would install both a Mk 19 and M240 CROWS on the RCB as a start. I would also consider modifying the CROWS mount to carry a pair of either the Javelin or Hellfire missiles like the Israeli RAFAEL Mini-Typhoon mounts. Both of these systems are fire and forget. They are light in weight, should not overtax the CROWS power drives, and the CROWS already has on-board targeting the missiles could use.

The Mk 38 Mod 2 system is suitable for the RCB, but weight could be reduced if the 25mm Bushmaster was replaced by a 20mm gun such as the M197 3-barreled rotart cannon on late model AH-1 Cobras and Sea Cobras. If I was installing a Mk 38 Mod 2 system, I’d make sure that it carried a co-axial machine gun or a couple of missiles.

I understand that the USN may be buying the RAPAEL Mini-Typhoon stystem as the Mk 49 Mod 0, but that’s not far along in the procurement process yet. Mini-Typhoon would be an even better rig for the RCB.

During World War 2, some of the most deadly and vicious fights were fought not by the major warships of the day, but by the “Small Boys” — the PT boats and motor gunboats — against similar craft or heavily armed transport barges. The Royal Navy’s Coastal Forces regularly operated in the waters off France and the North Sea where they fought numerous fights with the German’s Schnellbootes and other fast craft.

In the Med, both the American and Royal Navies fought the Germans’ Schnellbootes and their infamous “F-Lighters”. The F-Lighter was a self-propelled barge used to move troops and equipment that was loaded down with all kinds of light, medium, and heavy flak guns. The F-Lighter was designed to be immune to torpedo attack (it drew very little water) and have the firepower to overwhelm the allied craft that attacked it.

In the Pacific, the venerable PT boat went from a torpedo carrying craft designed to attack major ships to a gunboat for attacks on the barges the Japanese were using to move supplies to their various island garrisons. The Japanese hated and feared the American “Devil Boats” and they reinforced their barges with all manner of light, medium, and heavy automatic weapons to protect them.

Now, fast forward to 2010. We have small, fast Iranian boats with ship-killing missiles strapped onto them. We have numerous, fast pirate skiffs threatening shipping off Somalia and the Horn of Africa. What we need to counter the threat is our own version of Coastal Forces with fast, well-armed, and numerous attack boats.

This ought to be a no-brainer. What’s better? A multi-billion dollar, underarmed frigate that’s a anti-ship missile magnet, or a swarm of heavily armed, fast boats like the Swedish CB90H (called RCB by the USN)?

You could buy a whole lot of RCB boats for 1/10th the cost of a modern frigate, combine them with aerial assets like Fire Scout, and have a huge advantage when it comes to dealing with this low-end kind of threat.

Buy squadrons of RCB craft fitted with high precision, remote weapons stations (RWS) in both guns and missiles. Attach these craft to amphibious ships or sea bases like the old ATSB (advanced tactical support bases) pioneered by the USN in Vietnam.

Now, let’s see the pirates and the Iranians come out to play. Instead of a juicy, slow commercial ship or a fat missile magnet, the bad guys are now obliged to fight a swarm of fast, well-armed hornets that have powerful (and lethal) stings. Care to guess how well your average pirate skiff or Iranian boat would do against RWS-directed medium and heavy gunfire or Hellfire or Javelin missile attacks?

The USN version of CB-90 is built by SafeBoats and designated RCB and some are assigned to Riverine Group One.

While there is an overlap between MESRONs area of responsibilty and that of the RivRons, there is also a distinctly different set of boat rqtms. I see a merger happening.

The use of CROWS mount with larger weapons would be a real and doable setup. Going further to Javelins or Hellfire missiles would be next. I still think that 120mm mortars would be good indirect fire weapons on small warboats, but just am not sure how “small” that is?

Warboats.org will be posting more on its forum about New Boat Weapons.

In water that placid, and in the littorals, you know what would really scare the bejeezus out of me if I was a captaining a hundred million dollar warship?

Sharks with lasers.

Alright, not really. Actually, something based on the kind of insanely cheap drug-running sub-boats they use in the Caribbean and South America. Practically impossible to spot from the air or surface ships (as recent US navy tests have shown) and perfectly capable of being turned into a modern, cheap, first-world design with some quiet torps and cheap civilian naval sensors added – perhaps entry-level radar, gps, sat phones and radio, etc. (Although maybe I’ve just blown my own argument out of the water, because when our own shipyards and defense firms design them, they’ll inevitably cost a billion apiece…)

Speedboats are flashy and noisy (including in the EM spectrum) whilst those low profile boats aren’t (although, yes, everything is less flashy and noisy than an LCS going 50 knots, or a CH 53). Almost every single one of the sub-boats that was captured was captured on its slipway, or sold-out through detailed intelligence – like when and where it would rendezvous with a trawler carrying a drug shipment. Otherwise, at sea, the highest-tech navy in the world, the USN, just can’t find them.

Having read this I believed it was really informative. I appreciate you spending some time and effort to put this short article together. I once again find myself spending a significant amount of time both reading and leaving comments. But so what, it was still worthwhile!